Archive of Our Own

She pauses in her kiss and smiles and the spider knows her outlaw has a secret.

"Doesn't matter," Ashe murmurs as she looks at her inquisitive. She won't let it go, and quietly, insists. "It's like," she says in a breath, standing in their bedroom in the early morning light, rocking forward on her tiptoes to remain a finger's width away from her lips, "kissing someone that's in another room."

She blinks long lashes at her. "That does not make any sense."

"I never said that it would," she shrugs, Amélie's to muddle with because she asked. "It's fine, you're fine. You sure you're alright going by yourself?"

Ashe has a meeting today. Several, in fact, all the way through to dusk. Enough, so that when they take their trip together once this deal is closed, Deadlock will be well supplied in its leader's absence, able to start extending feelers for its next big thing; a perpetual moneymaker, because the heist that's life and business never ends. There was no prolonged joy for her love to have in moments spent idle following earned success, but now—

She is changed. She grows, a rose in bloom. Doing what she can, for her, for her family, for the both of them.

And yet she is…

Amélie's eyes slant. She knows precisely where Ashe will be: one call and the outlaw will be there, and she would further remark that having Bob's more than adequate escort leaves her far safer than the wolves Ashe must face alone.

"I should be asking you."

"I can handle it," she grins. Bob will still worry, she thinks. Ashe will worry too; endless little circles. But her heart is too closed and her feelings too frayed for Amélie to discount the assurance those words bring, that Ashe will and she too will be fine, and she, Amélie Lacroix, can do this.

She departs her lips, fingers brushed against her mouth, her jaw, to carry the memory. "I'll see you tonight, ma chérie," she promises. Lingering. "I miss you."

Ashe exhales.

"I'm not gone yet."

So kiss her.

Kiss her to death— and more than make do.

Poetically it's raining, enough to hide tears she cannot shed.

The car radio hums indistinct at its low volume beneath the rhythmic patter, the singer's voice briefly decipherable as she climbs octaves. Amélie dismisses the words, their meaning: instead watching the residue slowly gather in trembling blots on the windshield, only to inevitably break apart and fall toward the dashboard in solitude. It often rains, here in the city. It is preferable to the infernal heat of the desert and its canyon… a better backdrop to her forlorn melancholy and she softly sighs, ducking her chin beneath layers of scarf and jacket to her freshly laundered shirt.

Not her shirt. Ashe's. She had to. Before she even knew what she was doing she was wearing it; so that she is here for her too, in a way. Ashe had asked her if she'd seen it. She said she didn't know. Surely she could guess. Her familiar scent is, comforting. And it had helped. The dancing girls from the theatre troupe all those months ago were more than delighted by her attendance of their return performance, and she had spent hours with them after, being who she might have been. But it wasn't her reason. Not at all what her closely guarded worries were about.

She didn't lie… but there is one more thing she has planned for herself today.

She sees Bob returning in her periphery. He knew, because she asked him to come: sensible for another to collect, and not because of fraught nerves. Her heart beats loud enough to drown out the song, and the rain; the piercing cut of sound then silence as Bob resettles himself in the driver's seat, and of course she is the only one capable of breathing, and yet—

He holds out the envelope.

Delivered this morning by courier, now hers.

So fleeting in her hands.

Her gaze tightens. She can't look at it. She can't breathe. Only the teardrops pouring outside will do, fingers systematically prising sealed cardboard edges apart. Turn it upside down. Let it fall. Catch it and release a tremored breath.

There is no note, to accompany the key.

But then again, she asked Angela not to send one.

He drives her where she needs to go.

The city is structured, and monochrome. She does not see it. The rain takes her elsewhere; it reminds her of tedium, of after parties and moodily lit stages – of returning home, a pair of safe arms to welcome her back. She thinks about her. She thinks about him.

This next verse, she must do alone. The car quietly idles on another kerb. Bob watches her in silence, circuits and thoughts: he would go with her to the end if she asked, the source of who Ashe has inherited this quality from. He is reliable, and resilient, and… unbreakable. She envies that. Outside on the street the ordinary edifice looms, a dragon's lair, and all she has to fight it is herself.

At the very least the omnic remains a gentleman as her door opens and he is standing there, holding out his hand. She has no recollection of it, his quiet departure. She does not… mind. It is safe not to ponder each of his movements. She trusts him. To turn her back on as is necessary, as she might to hide surfacing feelings of questioned purpose about a life she wants to have… or to shadow slight, appreciative smiles for his present aid.

She walks inside. Alone. The concierge waves her through, as they would any other. The floor is like seafoam. Her heels echo. One thousand. Two, five. Seven. Through there. Countless small, stacked pieces, and things, and secrets. Many that lie empty wanting for use. Some that do not.

So many doors, and endings, and beginnings.

Inside the P.O. box is another small envelope. All-consuming. She knows what it holds. She hasn't seen it in years. Her breath creases in her throat and she doesn't exhale; the blood pooling in her ears akin to recollected anguish, or fear, and she takes one unaccounted step back.

She will not punish it. She is done doing that.

The pain is a knife, slashed across her heart.

She held on for – nothing, in the end.

It was her final vow, not to forget. But she had; and although she had the waking nightmare, the memory of her will suppressed and the order that came with it, it's always been in pieces. Pieces she had tried to stitch back together without success, where she grasped what she could and held onto what she couldn't as Luna sang.

She had left flowers at his grave. Passing sentiment that had never left. The last time she was Amélie Lacroix, that they couldn't quite take.

But that was then.

It is a tiny, tangible thing: smaller than the key and the feeling that brought her here, the simple gold band that had once donned his finger as witness to what was theirs. Every day he had worn it. She had wondered, in her delirium, his pulse dipped scarlet on her fingers, why. It makes sense to her now.

The ring is cold. It is so, so cold as she presses the metal to her bruise coloured lips, the only thing she had ever wanted… now again hers.

Amélie's eyes close: and for a moment, exists.

"You're not really here, are you?"

It's the second time today she's said it. Her body is spun against hers, Ashe's arms all the tighter around her waist with her own small fear, so vulnerable where she cannot see. The outlaw's day was glorious. She told her about it over dinner with celebratory drinks, Bob's own blend. It isn't that way now. It's not her fault, nothing she has or hasn't done – blankets and comforter rustling as Amélie moves to face her completely, to try to assuage it.

The leader of the Deadlock Rebels spends so much time perfecting the mask for others. Here she is herself: her brow furrowed and her soft chapped lips still faintly red, eyes piercing in the dim light.

Ashe smiles, briefly. It all too quickly fades. Presence as loud as a response as Amélie's been able to give her for days and even that is not fooling her anymore.

If it ever did. She is too perceptive of her. Ashe's fingertips glance her cheek and Amélie doesn't… quite flinch… but she does look away, undeserving, and there is an ache of sadness there, a desire.

"Tell me where you are."

She wants to.

"I cannot."

"I know there's something. It's wearing you down. I know I don't know, but… you've… you're doing that suffer in isolation thing again, and I just—"

She sounds frustrated. She's done everything right, Amélie thinks. Been patient. Left her to her thoughts and offered companionship for the rest. Not demanded, not asked for anything – waited, and now that she's decided enough is enough and she's not willing it's all suddenly expended.

She's gotten very good at reading her in return. At understanding. Ashe knows her darkest fears. In exchange Amélie has overheard her weeping heart.

"You are here. I know— I know I am no longer alone. You have convinced me of that." And even if she hadn't everything around her is built with so much love it would be difficult for her not to thaw.

"Then why, Blue?" Her voice cracks on her ascent. "What's keeping you from me?"

It's—

Because she is—

She stares at the overhead canopy. It is pleasant, much as she is not. She is lost in those woods. Drowned for it, in their sorrow. It is… frightening to leave them, no matter how she may wish to.

What a harrowing thing, to be known. She would say she'll tell her when she's ready… but will she ever be?

"There's somewhere I need to return to. Someone I need to face."

"Talon?"

A far easier foe. "No," she says, shaking her head. She looks right at her now and she doesn't turn away: Ashe doesn't either. "I need to visit Gérard's grave. And I would…. I need— I want you, to come with me."

Oh.

Now she feels like a fool.

She knew it was something big. At first glance she'd say Amélie's been more at peace with herself lately: happier. That she's decided, in every way, to stay… leading her to thinking, slowly scratching away at one festering bit in particular until she could finally let it out.

They should let dead men lie. In the abstract, sure. Whatever. She don't compare herself to the man that was Amélie's husband.

But when she does, she dislikes him on principle. Because Gérard Lacroix had what Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe wants most, and if it all hadn't gone spiralling into hell he would have kept her, because who wouldn't? He loved her, and she… still… loves him. It's useless to wonder, but sometimes she can't help it.

Especially now. It's not his fault. It's not her fault for being jealous. It's no one's fault, and if anyone's to blame – if things were as they ought to have been she never would have known her, and she can't help but think—

Is this why she didn't want to tell her? Because she was afraid of what her current lover would say? What she'd do?

Petulance over Angela is one thing. The husband, though: she can't even deny it. She doesn't want to. It's such a gut wrenching reflex, to how much she doesn't want to see what's left of the man they made her kill, and she'd rather go anywhere else.

But.

It ain't about her, is it?

Time to grow up. Ashe sighs beside her: defeated. She won't hide the frown, though.

"Why now?"

Softly. Genuinely. In return Amélie watches her stoic, filing away her reaction, giving her nothing to work with save what she already has, and strike her down for ever giving her a reason to doubt her.

"An anniversary."

She won't ask which one. "Right. So you'd want this to happen sooner rather than later, then."

"Yes."

She smiles for her sadly, feeling it and her voice waver. "You're sure."

"More than I have ever been."

She's so – and Amélie wouldn't agree with her if she said it – brave, right now. To throw off every shackle and forge herself anew… to finally turn around and look her pain in the eye and find her closure, on her own terms.

Ashe looks at her wearing it a moment longer, to remind herself why.

"Alright," she says. "I'll go."

She may let her down.

She has to believe that she won't.

The fact is, stories end. The hard work that follows goes unshown: the slow realisation in the person you've chosen's face that you were not saved, that there is something else in you, that a part of you remains buried there… always she's known the history but it's never been confronted. Not like this. Ashe thinks of hers own as bitter. Hers was too. It wasn't meant to be; was meant to be her starlight, and then—

It'll end, and Widowmaker will walk away. She knows it all too well. She feels as though she's slipping, that this has no control. It is irony then, that she has to believe. To place her faith in a rebel of a woman who has made her feelings over past ties known, that last time when she ran away from what she didn't want she came back, stayed with her: through all of Angela's disquiet… showed her a piece of herself that forever hurt… Amélie was proud of her then she can give her time now.

Ashe looks her in the eye. Asks her the specifics.

And then, agrees.

It isn't a surprise. But she still feels her chest tighten with something she cannot name – an overwhelming sense and the only way to make sense to reach out featherlight and kiss her, and the outlaw makes a quiet noise that's close to despair, because she still doesn't think she's worth…

Ashe swallows it too. She's made up her mind by the time Amélie is done with her kiss, her red eyes pensive.

"I'll take care of it," she says. "I'll sort all the logistics out."

And she does. She holds her in her arms whilst she settles into business in the middle of the night, sleep and rest for people who don't have other things to do. She draws up plans, charters some flights; all she asks of her is where. She designates someone responsible to sign-off on the goods changing hands and calls in some favours, ordering someone else who's sleepless into rushing through nearly finished papers, that they better be done by the end of the day tomorrow – and when he says "hell no, it ain't happening that fast" she drops her demeanour and says "Bez, this is serious" and he agrees. She dives into the minutiae Amélie had only begun to consider, blinded by her end: low profile. Her network, her way. It unlocks a vague old memory, where she was not supposed to be there and not supposed to listen but she had and she did, and the features that were his slowly fill in, but she only sees… Ashe. Contrary to the Calamity's explosive nature she likewise knows how to conduct clandestine operations, and half way through it all Amélie realises what she's adjusting.

"Our journey to Paris. I made you promise not to bring anything else."

Ashe inhales, and she can imagine the fond, resigned smile at whatever she's currently working on. "It's only fair, seeing as Bob's coming too."

That's different, she thinks. She nestles deeper into her, unkempt. "Is it?"

Her heart speaks before she does. "I'm trying to be... a more understanding girlfriend. It's what you need. So it don't matter what my feelings say." She's been thinking about it a lot, given the reticence of that sigh. "I won't deny them. But they shouldn't rule me all of the time, and I can't just keep taking you away. Much as I want to."

Amélie smiles, softly.

"I want to be here."

"I know." But she wants to be there, too. Ashe lowers her device, moves: discards it unceremoniously on the nightstand. Breathes in, breathes out. Amélie measuring, calculating every second… accurate in her prediction of when her hand will seek hers, and lace. "It's in motion now… guess all that's left for us is sleep." Out of sight she wets her lips. "What else can I do?"

Enough, love; she's done enough. But that won't satisfy her when there's always something more. And there is.

"Hold me."

Keep her safe. She will entrust it to you.

It's a blur after that.

She packs. She doesn't need much. She adds a few more beautiful things, that a rebel and not a widow may want after this is done. Ashe repacks. Grumbling about the weather forecast and needing more long coats and scarves, routinely returning to the hidden compartment in her dresser that she thinks Amélie doesn't know about – although she has never looked inside. She is allowed her secret sentiments. Her things; perhaps she ought to bring her own. Her wedding portrait is tucked between the pages of a worn book like a mark and that same evening she picks the lock on the desk in Ashe's office to retrieve the photograph that was taken after their first heist together, Ashe's scrawled handwriting on the back, 'taking back what's ours' never feeling more right.

She might notice it missing. Eventually. But she won't have far to look.

Deadlock says their farewells, Bars of course left in charge. They don't know what the three of them are leaving early for, yet they still wish her well. She thinks that she will miss them. Bob loads the car. Ashe holds her hand. They board their flight. Ashe holds her hand. She doesn't rest. She'll rest when it's over. She sees it sprawling down below: sweet smelling lavender grown in the fields were they not withered and the surrounding sunflowers long dead. She made so many promises. Too many broken. Too late, next year. On the way to a car Ashe selects a second scarf and her skin blisters as she needlessly wraps it around her neck yet admittedly Amélie feels… warmer. More steps. Little ones. Arriving at the farmhouse in the middle of nowhere – charming despite the short notice and certainly improved by unlimited budget, placing suitcases in rooms that aren't theirs. Tomorrow all too soon. Please; hold her hand. Hold her.

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

Today.

Ashe drives them both there. It isn't a procession. She never went to his funeral. She watches the grey sky, the corvids, the spindly trees and their limbs devoid of leaves, head bowed against glass. What is she hoping to find? This homecoming, where once she thought to lay down beside him in her agony? It wasn't all exquisite. She was manipulated to kill but she enjoyed it. That was always in her. What a gnawing thing it is. The hills stretch on for miles; so many dead. They did not know what a precious thing they had until she took it away.

The engine cuts and she departs her reverie for the present, Ashe likely having watched her for several quiet minutes.

"I'm ready," Amélie says. "Let's go."

She has to be. Each step is harder than the last, with so many to judge her. So many feelings. She suspects she could fill a cemetery of her own… no, she will not count. Instead she focuses on the constant: everything that makes them what they are, who she is. She will, can get through this. She has weathered, survived, through worse.

The leaves are mulch from recent rain but the path leading to Gérard's grave is well kept. This place is cared for, smattered with tokens from passing ghostly mourners, and she is not surprised to find a wilted lily beneath her husband's epitaph… but it only garners the briefest of her considerations as Amélie reminds herself to breathe.

"Mon chér."

The man that she loved.

Do you know who this is?

Hands slipped around his neck in a violent caress

Flashing lights nowhere to go. Stop being weak. Take this feeling make it more.

…yes. She remembers it all, excruciatingly.

So much has happened. So much she cannot say.

It was snowing, last time. Ashe tries to unlink her fingers, thinking that's what she needs but Amélie needs her now more than ever. They took her. She took— everything. The grief, in her… wells. Nowhere to go. And something else follows. It was never meant to be like this, her in a graveyard and his blood on clean hands, so wholly insignificant.

Her knuckles tense.

They didn't… deserve this.

She knows this feeling too. It is one her outlaw wears often and well, but it's hers, this volatile trace to lacerate and lash. Ashe couldn't understand why she didn't feel this way about it. Perhaps that was the point. It felt deserved. Here now with her it doesn't. She has anew, but she wanted.

She breathes against the resting knife. "How could they do this to us?"

Spreading: plunged again into her heart like a draught in her veins, and her shoulders shudder as she forcibly exhales. So raw of a thing, this anger Ashe kept warm for her; it hurts. The time she and Gérard spent together so much less now than the time apart. It hurts. They were strangers, once. It is the most painful thing, to realise: to love something that shall one day die, the creeping fear it will be too soon.

It is not always literal.

Sometimes it is.

It hurts. It hurt so much she tore it out. It almost destroyed her once, and it has not lessened with time.

And now she wants to put it back.

And she'd let her.

To do this is to lose.

Everyone misses—

No exceptions.

—if it is a game, she'll win, even if—

Even if she—

It is what anyone does when they are broken. She hasn't, not even once. She was made that way on purpose. She feels cold. All the walls around her crumble and naught is left but what was stowed. He lies unmoving beneath her as he did then – the one person they would not think to protect him from. The silence is deafening. She sees it all – the rows of corpses and herself, the stranger not unknown to misery holding her hand as a widow finally weeps.

A last act of grief.

Of her love.

One tear on her cheek at first. Then another. Impossible to stem those that follow. Amélie closes her eyes but it makes no difference, a forsaken breath barely smothered deep between her ribs. She recognises it from others as despair. She recognises these… these tears as her own… less. She should not weep. So easily her heart could stop. It won't. It is not her right to weep. And as she cries Ashe quietly moves, her empty hand smoothing into fabric on her opposing arm – not turning her away from the things that make and ruin her, her forehead pressed against her closest shoulder, for there are no words yet she is there for her, through the bad as well as good.

She isn't all mean; not if you get this close to her heart. And she cries for that, too: her gentleness and presence, for the two people in this world that have mattered to her most.

"I loved him," Amélie manages, so quiet. "Je t'aime, mon coeur." She opens her blearied eyes as she wearily smiles. "But I cannot stay here with you."

Not at his grave and not in the past with each one of her sins.

It's why she came. She unfurls her palm. Two rings: hers as well as his.

She runs her thumb over the worn golden edge. "Do you remember that day? I do. I was so happy to be your wife. So many people expressed doubt over me – and you did not care." She smiles through her tears, exhaling a laugh. "…I should have brought flowers. I thought you should have this with you again; that it should not be locked away alone in a safe."

She covets them together one last time. Lingering with him a little longer.

"You know, I have found something else that I want."

On her shoulder Ashe inhales, hung on to every word, forgetting to breathe out again.

"You would have liked her. You were supposed to shut her down, once: I'm glad that you failed." She feels Ashe smirk, amused by her honesty. "You always were better at dealing with Americans, or people. You said to me the subtlety of someone's ingenuity was a mystery only I could unravel: though our last dance shall have to wait. It has taken me too long, mon cher. But now I understand—"

What it means to love and to love someone—

And why he did not hate—

"I could not have done this without her."

She says it slowly so Ashe knows that it is meant. So that she herself can hear. There is no going back. It will never mend and it will never be right. Yet without rot, new things cannot grow in its place. Sometimes anger itself is the defiance – the decision to bring herself forward from the earth in which she was buried. And the difference, now, is she no longer has to hide.

Amélie Lacroix. The ballerina, the wife.

She forgives you.

Widowmaker. The sniper, the perfect predator.

She is both of these things.

She loves you.

Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe. She knows a hundred different ways to kill her... and one in which to live. She'll make the most of the time she's sharing with her… and enjoy it.

—He was right.

She could still come home.

Fearful girl. Step out of your cell. And into the light.

"Adieu, Gérard."

The winter has been long.

Maybe she is ready for spring.